EF Education-EasyPost made a strong push late in the 2022 season to keep its WorldTour seat in the game of musical chairs that is the UCI's promotion/relegation system. Relieved of that stress, CEO Jonathan Vaughters breathed a sigh of relief and reflected on the "absurd" racing methods teams had to engage in to avoid relegation.

"Next season," CEO Vaughters told Cycling Weekly (opens in new tab), "we can focus on 'racing' instead of 'three in the top 10 would be great.' "I hated that kind of racing.

"In September, I was like, 'Oh my God, I'm second, sixth, ninth.' We needed all three of us to win the race, so we couldn't completely sacrifice any one of us. It's a really unreasonable way to run a race like that when you're trying to get a couple of guys in the top 20, and it's annoying for everybody on the team."

In 2023, when the new three-year cycle begins, he says he "looks forward to not having to race like that."

He revealed that, like Israel Premier Tech, which finished 20th in the three-year ranking, he struggled to put together a team early in the season due to illness, and if the UCI follows the sport's standard rule of keeping only the top 18 riders, he may not make the World Tour next season He said that if the UCI abides by the sport's standard rule that only the top 18 riders remain, he may not be able to participate in the World Tour next season.

The World Team Rankings add up the points of each team's top 10 riders to determine the top 18, but one-day races are an important factor, accounting for almost half of the available points EF Easy Post at the peak of the spring classic season this season, COVID-19 and other ailments, reducing it to just 11 riders.

"There are a lot of very high level one-day races in March and April, Vaughters said.

Most of the lower ranked teams have added races to their calendars this year in their final battle to escape the relegation zone.

"It's about sending riders to races like the Tour of Norway and Milan-Torino that we normally don't participate in but that suit us," Vaughters said.

"We're not going to go after races like Belgium or France, which, frankly, we've never recruited for.

Last week, director Shirley Wegelius told Cycling News that she was not sure if the team would continue to stack its schedule.

"Obviously, it remains to be seen if teams will approach this with the same intensity as they did in the last few months of the 2022 season.

"Because there are other things that could push teams in a different direction, whether it's sponsor demands or pursuing other goals, we all know what problems [the UCI points competition] can cause in the last few months of a three-year cycle.

EF-Easy Post recruited to the Grand Tour rather than targeting the lucrative Classics circuit. Richard Karapas is one of the riders the team is counting on to deliver results not only in the Tour de France, but in a variety of other races.

"He is a very versatile rider. He can win one-day races, he's an Olympic champion, he can win Grand Tour stages. He won three stages in the Vuelta last year and had a great run. He can win the climber's jersey and the mountains prize."

Next year's Tour de France "fits his characteristics as a rider very well. He's an aggressive rider, an aggressive rider. The time trial is kind of his Achilles heel, so the Tour route suits him very well."

"He's a very aggressive rider.

"But it's a long way from fist-bumping the table and saying, 'I'm going to beat Jumbo Visma and (Jonas) Vingegaard.' There are better runners higher up. Nevertheless, this route is a nice gift from ASO. So thank you."